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theodp writes "After shelling out a reported $90 million to buy PlanetAll in 1998, Amazon shuttered the site in 2000, explaining that 'it seemed really superfluous to have it running beside Friends and Favorites.' But years later in a 2008 patent filing, Amazon described the acquired PlanetAll technology to the USPTO in very Facebook-like terms. And on Tuesday, the USPTO issued US Patent No. 7,739,139 to Amazon for its invention, the Social Networking System, which Amazon describes thusly: 'A networked computer system provides various services for assisting users in locating, and establishing contact relationships with, other users. For example, in one embodiment, users can identify other users based on their affiliations with particular schools or other organizations. The system also provides a mechanism for a user to selectively establish contact relationships or connections with other users, and to grant permissions for such other users to view personal information of the user. The system may also include features for enabling users to identify contacts of their respective contacts. In addition, the system may automatically notify users of personal information updates made by their respective contacts.' So, should Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg worry about Amazon opening a can of patent whup-ass?"

1) Buy company that "invents" un-patented technology everyone is using.
2) Patent said technology yourself, because the USPTO can't be bothered to actually think about what they are doing.
3) Wait for the other users of "your" technology to make a substantial amount of money.
4) Profit!

It looks like the buyout by Amazon does predate Friendster and MySpace... though to be honest, there's no way in hell this should pass any "obvious" test.

That may well be true, but, the website based social networking sites are far from the first to utilize this "technology"

'A networked computer system provides various services for assisting users in locating, and establishing contact relationships with, other users. For example, in one embodiment, users can identify other users based on their affiliations with particular schools or other organizations. The system also provides a mechanism for a user to selectively establish contact relationships or connections with other users, and to grant permissions for such other users to view personal information of the user. The system may also include features for enabling users to identify contacts of their respective contacts. In addition, the system may automatically notify users of personal information updates made by their respective contacts.'

This has a very strong similarity to "elite" status granted to users of old school dial up BBSs for uploading or otherwise providing coveted data or services. Such similar systems were even loosely in place within AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy, and other dial-up ISPs long before 1998. Even forum profiles could conceivably fall into this category.

Except that's completely wrong. The Date of Invention is the earliest of 3 dates: the date of public disclosure, the earliest date of *continuous* development before the date of file, or the date of file.

So, yes, obviousness does matter in this case, as does the DoI.

WIth such esteem that they proclaim they have, you would think that Slashdotters would actually do the research they make fun of journalists for not doing, but no....

In order for an invention to be patentable it must be new as defined in the patent law, which provides that an invention cannot be patented if: "(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent," or "(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country more than one year prior to the application for patent in the United States . .."

If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere in the world, or if it was known or used by others in this country before the date that the applicant made his/her invention, a patent cannot be obtained. If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere, or has been in public use or on sale in this country more than one year before the date on which an application for patent is filed in this country, a patent cannot be obtained. In this connection it is immaterial when the invention was made, or whether the printed publication or public use was by the inventor himself/herself or by someone else. If the inventor describes the invention in a printed publication or uses the invention publicly, or places it on sale, he/she must apply for a patent before one year has gone by, otherwise any right to a patent will be lost. The inventor must file on the date of public use or disclosure, however, in order to preserve patent rights in many foreign countries.

Even if the subject matter sought to be patented is not exactly shown by the prior art, and involves one or more differences over the most nearly similar thing already known, a patent may still be refused if the differences would be obvious. The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention. For example, the substitution of one color for another, or changes in size, are ordinarily not patentable.

But hey, feel free to go ahead and make stuff up about continuous development - that'll get you an upmod, despite it being hogwash. Not that GP was completely correct - there's that one year window where somebody else can describe / publish an invention that you have been working on but haven't filed a patent for. If you can file within the year and prove you started inventing it before the other person, then you have a chance of a valid patent. But after the one year window, it doesn't matter when you started working on your invention.

This application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 11/022,089, filed Dec. 22, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,386,464 which is a division of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/780,486, filed Feb. 17, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,194,419 which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/348,355, filed Jul. 7, 1999 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,714,916), which is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 08/962,997, filed Nov. 2, 1997 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,269,369).

A continuation application [wikipedia.org] gets the same precedence date as the original patent but validity time from the date of acceptance. The Wikipedia article referenced, whilst lacking some citations seems to be correct (at least it's current version [wikipedia.org]) as you can verify against the the Patent office FAQ [uc.edu]

First, it's obvious that there was prior art for the patent as described, when it was filed in 2008.

Second, even if Planetall used a unique and patentable invention in 1998, it cannot be patented with an application filed in 2008. Here's a descriptive quote from the MIT Technology Licensing Office:

The U.S. patent law system is among the most lenient in the world with regards to prior disclosure of your invention. It allows you to publish your invention or offer it for sale prior to filing a patent applicat

That's all very good, Mr. Patent-Law-Reader, but why should we expect a reviewer at the USPTO to be aware of that rule? They don't have time to read legalese: they have patents to grant. Including mine, for a method of storing and nesting hypertext comments in a networked news system. Now get off their backs!

Oh, please. Before any of you posted you'd already violated my patent on the business method of 'patenting methods that others are already employing'. I am entitled to all proceeds derived from enforcing your respective patents.

Actually the prior art that is required may even be earlier than that. You are only statutorily barred from a patent if the prior art ( 35 USC 102(b) type art) is more than 1 year prior to your priority date (or on sale in use 1 year prior).

If it is say 6 months from your priority date (102 (a) the inventor may file a 131 declaration which attests that the invention was reduced to practice prior to the prior art date or that it was conceived prior to the prior art date and they diligently worked on the inv

Well, if your reference is another patent or patent application publication under 102(e), the prior art date (i.e., the filing date of the prior art patent or pub) could be more than a year before the priority date, and the applicant could still swear behind it (however unlikely that might be).

My company in the mid 90's had an online resume system for internal postings that allowed people to post resumes anonymously, and hiring managers could share postings and information selectively based on whatever criteria they wanted, effectively filtering job seekers.

Hate to point out the obvious, but slashdot, relationships, journal, submit a story, karma, comment response emails, basically describes the principles of this patent. Perhaps the patent filers aren't low ID types and don't realise how long it has been around.

OK, I was a member of Quantum Link, a Commodore 64 and 128 super-BBS which was the predecessor of AOL. It was founded in 1985, had hundred of thousands of members, and they could search for each other based on profiles and information contained therein. We could chat, send each other messages, even play cooperative games. It may have been a little to simplistic to fully qualify as "prior art", but certainly by the early 90's after it had morphed into AOL, and started allowing non-Commodore computers in, i

it appears that the declining quality of education in this country is reaching all the way to the patent registrars themselves. What a fine example of stupidity and.. dare I say.. incredible ignorance we have here. Honestly, who the hell hasn't heard of Facebook? Where do they find these people?

The patent was filed in 2008. It literally looks like something that might have been written in 2000 and sat around in the bottom of a desk drawer for years before someone found it and mailed it in. Hell, it cites Palm Pilot, Lotus Notes, and the Internet White Pages as prior art, and nothing since!

The application was filed in 2008, true. But look! Here's another patent [uspto.gov] with essentially the same disclosure (different claims) that was filed in 1997! Magic!!

Amazon went back and looked at their old technology, thought about it a bit, and realized that they had already all the core components of Facebook, they just hadn't realized it as such. And in the US system, even if you didn't realize it at the time, as long as you disclosed it you win.

This kind of nonsense can be stopped if you tell applicants that they have to claim everything they're going to claim in their first application (keep divisionals based on restriction requirements but otherwise curtail continuation and CIP practice, to be technical). This is not a theoretical argument, either: Europe has just recently adopted a system like this, major pieces go into effect on October 1. See this PDF [sutherland.com] for more information. Executive summary of the European system: your invention is locked down two years after the first time the patent office sends you a letter. You don't get to go back 10 years later claiming you invented Google or something.

It appears that you have failed law school or at least the part of the patent bar that recognizes that the first effective filing date of this patent is 2 Nov 1997.
"RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 11/022,089, filed Dec. 22, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,386,464 which is a division of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/780,486, filed Feb. 17, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,194,419 which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/348,355, filed Jul

If your talk about synonyms is implying that registration is that same as examination, then you are simply wrong. In the context of intellectual property, examination includes substantive review while registration does not. Even in plain English, I find it dubious that registration is a synonym for examination.

You are entitled to your own views of whether extended prosecution should be grounds for rejection, but as the law stands, it is not.

This Amazon patent cited other Amazon patents going back to 1997 (filing date) - approved 2001: 6175831 [uspto.gov]
Abstract: A networking database containing a plurality of records for different individuals in which individuals are connected to one another in the database by defined relationships. Each individual has the opportunity to define the relationship which may be confirmed or denied. E-mail messaging and interactive communication between individuals and a database service provider provide a method of constru

I love this, I hope Amazon tries to sue every Social Networking like site out there! Then we can watch it crash and burn.
Most likely, they'll just hold on to it and claim it's value. Possible go after small dogs to gain a few pennies. But I'd love to see them try to hit up Microsoft/Google/MySpace/Facebook and probably several dozen other sites.

No, they'll hold onto it for cross-licensing purposes. The next time a business operating a service that vaguely qualifies as social networking tries to sue Amazon, Amazon plays this card. That's what patents mean to companies like Amazon: they're playing cards in a hand to prevent losing an expensive game. In a pinch Amazon could use it to extract licensing fees, but that's probably not their immediate intent.

I worked for a start-up in the.com boom whose selling point was "self updating address book". It consisted of a web app PIM suite (email, calendar, chat, address book, etc) where each field displayed was available for access to "friends" etc. This was 1999. The original patent filing date looks like 1997 though, so is that prior art, and if not, why is a patent whose filing date was 1997 finally granted now?

The part of the patent posted in the article looks like the end. That's like patenting a Bicycle by saying it's a device with two wheels and some pedels which you can power to transport you places. Obviously that kind of patent would make not sense and there can be an infinite amount of bicycle designs which acheive the same goal but don't copy each other or rip each other off. In this case I highly doubt that Facebook actually took any code or even any major functionality from PlanetAll. I mean that's giving Facebook way too much credit. Basically Facebook was a dead technology until they went and merged a hack of Twitter's timeline in with their social networking system. Until they did that they didn't stand out from the pack at all.

Filing extensions. It's how more than a few patent trolls managed to set their patents up, by continually filing extensions and amending them to better line up with where technology was going already then dropping them like bombs on anyone that came along.

This application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 11/022,089, filed Dec. 22, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,386,464 which is a division of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/780,486, filed Feb. 17, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,194,419 which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/348,355, filed Jul. 7, 1999 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,714,916), which is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 08/962,997, filed Nov. 2, 1997 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,269,369).

agree with most patents like these, as long as it was awarded I personally would not at all mind seeing some cash rich entity open a can of whup-ass on Zuckerberg, at the very least it would be some form of karmic payback for stealing ( as is alleged) the Facebook idea from the students who hired him to help them. Cheating is one way to win at business, but not at life and I will never applaud a cheat, regardless of apparent success.

internet is social networking in reality (the transfer of information between individuals and groups), so basically Amazon have been given a patent for the internet, wtf crack monkey at USTPO let this one pass.

As I already posted [slashdot.org], I assumed it wasn't continued for 13 years, and didn't bother to look up the filing date. That turned out to be an incorrect assumption, and since Slashdot does not allow editing or retraction, all I can do is reply to everyone seeking to correct me.

Or, it could show you advertisements during your trip (maybe the teleportation includes a method and a system whereby the user is detained in a cocoon-like sensory deprivation node where the only thing they can see or hear are advertisements for, by way of example, 5 minutes, after which time they are transported forthwith to their ultimate destination). The length of time of the adverts would depend upon the amount of money said user "bid" for the trip and the amount of money advertisers were willing to pa

I read the claims, and noticed that 2 specifies 'friend requests' are sent via email. I only mention claim 2, because while everything else is unavoidably broad, and vaguely worded, I am fairly certain that Facebook specifically does not do this. Does this help to exonerate them?

More generally, since I care not a whit for facebook, how many claims must one infringe on to be held to task? All of them? 50%? 1? Or is it ultimately, and entirely, up to a judge/jury to decide if you acted in good faith in

Is there leeway for the judge to decide that while you may infringe, the claims you infringe upon are ridiculously broad? Is there a possibility for justifiable infringment; or is it completely black and white: You infringed, you pay the fine.

You are in violation of a patent if you violate any single claim - but!

Typically, you can describe claims as "independent" or "dependent" - in this case Claims 1 and 13 are the independent claims: they don't refer to any other claims.

These are the most important claims. To work out if you're in violation of a patent, read these first. If you aren't covered by either of these, then you aren't violating the patent.

The dependent claims (all the others) build on the independent claims by adding detail of some sort. You can't be in violation just by having the same detail in your implementation: you have to be violating this claim and the independent claim it refers to together.

By the way, most discussions on patents on Slashdot are usually the result of an accumulation of misinterpretations of the way patents work. It's really *only* the claims that matter, and when the other parts seem broad, it doesn't matter at all. Don't get riled up by the background text or the abstract - as people so often do. However, to my eyes, (IANAL) this patent actually is absurd, for once.

Software patents are clearly a huge mistake. The US should never have allowed them. They are costing business in the US a fortune and do nothing to protect the little guy inventor with the next idea that will change the world. They are simply a tax on innovation and must be stopped immediately.

how many absurd examples and exploits will it take to make some of you realize that this thing, CAN NOT work ? 'logic' being patented in the climax ? if a=> b, and b=>c then a=>c being patented ? what ?

I'm very pro-patents. I think they are necessary to spur new innovations in technology and, more importantly, share innovations with everyone as quickly as possible. Without patents, almost all manufacturing would be a trade secret, instead of the knowledge being spread world-wide as soon as a new invention arises. This, I think, is vital to our society.

However, the more I think about the nature of software the more I think software patents are unnecessary, even for the true innovations out there, and therefore actually harmful to progress. With traditional patents, what you get is a machine design, which by necessity must give you the "secret" to the innovation. That secret can be small, so long as it's new and non-obvious it's still worth copying. But with the current state of software patents, even if you read the patent you must still either re-create the patented idea from scratch, using the patent as nothing more than a direction (with no "secret" revealed at all), or you must reverse engineer the product to discover the secret for yourself. That doesn't spread the knowledge of the innovation at all, and does nothing to add incentive to the creators of a new innovation. In fact, thanks to patent trolls, it actually inhibits innovation in a lot of cases.

In my opinion, software patents need to either start coming with pseudo-code or be dismissed out of hand. All this bullshit of just listing a bunch of claims without any actual code behind it that can be applied by a software engineer is worthless. If the patent doesn't need any code for a competent engineer to re-create the product, then it's obviously not novel and should have been dismissed in the first place. Given the speed with which the software industry moves and strength of the open source movement, I think there is also strong evidence to suggest they are entirely unnecessary to promote innovation (which is what they exist to do).

When a process runs amok and takes down the host OS, we don't blame the process. We blame the OS. The OS's job is to protect the host (and other processes) from errant processes.

While it's certainly unethical behavior, I don't think we should rush to blame Amazon for this and any of its future actions. It's like putting candy in front of a baby and getting upset when the baby reaches for it.

I'm 33, have seen the rise of the dial-up BBS, Internet boom of the 90s, and still work in the IT industry. I don't have a MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter account. The only social networking that comes even close is Slashdot and the occasional postings on in other forums. Even so, I'm still relatively anonymous with the exception of what I tell you, and my online handle.

Is it me, or am I the only one that could get a rats ass about these social networking sites. Some how, I feel like *I'm* the odd ball here w

The claimed features? Or just the ones blathered on about in the abstract?

Also, was your BBS available for the examiner to cite as prior art? If not, you can't really fault the examiner for not citing it - examiners can't just say, "Yeah, I've seen that before," but not provide evidence to back up their statement.

First there was the Who program that let you see who was logged on. Then Les Earnest wrote the Finger program which displayed their.plan file. This enabled them to share personal information like which high school they went to. Then you could send them E-mail or ttymsgs and talk about it. The Name/Finger protocol makes it work over the network. Social networking in a nutshell.

RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 11/022,089, filed Dec. 22, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,386,464 which is a division of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/780,486, filed Feb. 17, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,194,419 which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/348,355, filed Jul. 7, 1999 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,714,916), which is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 08/962,997, filed Nov. 2, 1997 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,269,369).

That last one is the prior art date - November 2, 1997. This predates Facebook, Friendster, and all that jazz by half a decade.

Slashdot is fond of finding patents that describe an invention in very broad terms and then say someone else did that. Whoever does that doesn't understand patents. Before complaining go to the section labeled Claims. A claim will contain a number of elements. If previous literature does every single one of those elements then the patent should not have been granted. Otherwise the patent holder can go after someone who does every single one of those things. If someone doesn't do even a single thing li

Why are people allowed to patent obvious stuff? People were doing social networking in 1997 via the internet. Geocities? AOL Instant Messenger? ICQ? BBS? Tripod? Classmates.com?
Any of these ring a bell?

As a developer I am frightened every time I expose some code to the world. Who's patent have I infringed? If I make it so that a user's status is visible to others I can be assured that somebody has patented this. I would not be shocked if people have patents on things like logins and logouts, or a patent on centering things on a screen.

Now that the patent office basically has given away a patent that seems to cover facebook to perfection what technically stops Amazon from shutting Facebook down? People m

***grabbed this from wikipedia**The first public dial-up Bulletin Board System was developed by Ward Christensen. According to an early interview, while he was snowed in during the Great Blizzard of 1978 in Chicago, Christensen along with fellow hobbyist Randy Suess, began preliminary work on the Computerized Bulletin Board System, or CBBS. CBBS went online on February 16, 1978 in Chicago, Illinois. [2]**

If he's talking about the Internet, though, that award goes to VMS Notes - (don't have exact date - early to mid 1980s), which functioned similar to a stripped-down version of Usenet, but in a live chat manner.

(Sorry for the double-post, but perhaps this can help some smart lawyer to help get this inane patent revoked)

A more in-depth explanation of VMS Net and VMS is required:- The original intent was to create a version of an early Internet by linking VMS machines/clusters together like a super BBS. Eventually that fell away to where by the mid 80s or so, standard Internet/TCP IP/etc protocols had taken over and were being used. What it meant was that any university or major corporation that allowed access could link their machines to others and create a "web" of sites. These universities and corporations/government sites were the major original backbone of the Internet, so by definition it "used the Internet".

- How this worked in practice when I was at college in 1991 and first saw it(it had been implemented a year or two earlier, IIRC) was that each user had a space where they could program and make their own home page/space to use. Almost everyone had ASCII BBS type front-ends, complete with links, menus, and personal areas. This was a few years before the first web browsers came out, but functionally identical.

- The VMS link/Notes system usually was organized by areas, so that it was common to see a smaller discussion area devoted to each person. (in addition to the normal BBS/board type chat areas. So this was where everyone talked about their life, and so on, a lot like Facebook. You usually linked to your account's main page so that others could see and go there as well. (It was less thread driven and more topic driven by nature) ie - Ed's Corner/Life with Sandy/and so on... The admin found it easier to keep personal stuff limited to each main person/give them their own thread.

- There also was a live chat option as well. I remember getting online, checking out people's "pages" and so on when I was in Northern California for people who were in San Diego. And then logging into their local chat area and talking to them. In 1991.

Nothing really like it existed until much later, though, and so it's highly likely that nobody at these newer companies realized that a nearly identical thing to Facebook/etc existed that long ago on the Internet.(and of course BBS systems, but those technically didn't use the "Internet" until much later.(still early 90s - way before this patent's time-frame.)

Which is, BTW, the real problem: you can file a patent application and keep rewriting it for a decade or more until somebody comes up with the same idea. Then you tweak the language to match perfectly and collect big-ass cash money. Software patents may be stupid, but the rules that allow this are Sarah-Palin-retarded.

- The date to beat is Nov. 2, 1997, not the 2008 filing date. That is, art after Nov. 2, 1997 is not prior art.From the patent: This application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 11/022,089, filed Dec. 22, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,386,464 which is a division of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/780,486, filed Feb. 17, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,194,419 which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/348,355, filed Jul. 7, 1999 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,714,916), which

Exactly what I was thinking. Friends and Foes infringes on this patent. Having said that, the fact that they only applied for a patent after these types of systems were already built should stop it from being enforceable right? Prior art?

Can someone please put an end to this constant stream of approval diarrhea pouring out of the USPTO?

No.

(The proof is trivial: This situation is a gold mine for lawyers. Most members of the US Congress are lawyers. They may not understand technology, but they do understand the effect of patent law on lawyers' income. Ergo, the current mess that is US patent and copyright law won't be ended.;-)